Abstract

Consciousness
cannot be understood in isolation of the wide range of other phenomena
that share a common ontological root. Hence, a comprehensive theory of
consciousness must explain, not only self-awareness, intention, sensation,
perception, memory, cognition, learning, creativity, curiosity, and altered
states, but life per se, quantum entanglement, telepathy, precognition,
energy healing, the evolution of species, and the homing behavior of pigeons
and other animals. A theory that describes this polymorphous set is founded
on the concept that all of its elements are products of holistic systems.
That is, a theory of consciousness is a general theory of organization
and holistic systems. This paper describes the Theory of Enformed Systems
(TES), a general theory of systems that explains all the elements of the
set. Foundational to the theory is the fundamental, conserved, organizing
principle, enformy--the capacity to organize--without which life and
mentality would not be possible. The enformy posit and the Theory of Enformed
Systems are essential elements for systemics, the science of holistic
systems. Because systems are the objects of all scientific studies, systemics
is the foundation of all scientific disciplines.

Time
and space are modes by which we think, not conditions under which we live.
- Albert Einstein

Discovery
consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has
thought. - Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

I
would caution the reader to adhere to a maxim once issued by Warren McCulloch: "Do not bite my finger; look where I am pointing." - Karl Pribram

Introduction

This
paper describes the Theory of Enformed Systems1
(TES), a hypothetico-deductive paradigm of holistic systems (Watson, 1997a,
1997b). As a general theory of systems, TES explains the origin, fundamental
properties, and behaviors of holistic systems at all ontological levels.
TES does not displace the current scientific paradigms; instead, it forms
their foundation. Four statements place TES in the context of the current
disciplines: (a) A general theory of systems is necessarily a theory of
organization; (b) because TES is a general theory of organization, it belongs
to
systemics--the science of holistic systems; (c) because organization
per
se is fundamental to all observable phenomena, systemics is the most
basic branch of science; and (d) because TES is foundational to the prevailing
paradigms of science, it is outside the prevailing Weltanschauung; i.e.,
it cannot be understood or interpreted in terms of the prevailing paradigms.

The
prevailing paradigms address systems that are already organized, whereas
TES addresses organization per se--its origin, elaboration, and maintenance.
Organization per se is traditionally assumed to be a necessary precondition
for scientific study, and not itself a subject of study. For instance,
the standard model of the cosmos holds that the universe consists of (a)
matter, comprising fundamental particles such as quarks, electrons, photons,
etc.; (b) the properties of these particles, including charge, polarization,
spin, etc.; and (c) mass and energy--two fundamental, conserved principles2
that determine the behaviors of matter. The work of science has been to
discover and describe patterns of these behaviors. In physics, this work
entails applying the organization inherent in mathematics to map the organization
inherent in matter. As a result, the worldview of mathematical physics
is blind to organization per se because organization is intrinsic
to mathematics.

Systemics
radicalizes this. It allows scientists to turn their attention to the question,
"What is the origin of organization per se?" This question points
directly to topics that are invisible to prevailing paradigms, e.g., memory,
self-awareness, telepathy, quantum entanglement, morphogenesis, and the
evolution of species. We cannot discover the ontology of these phenomena
by focusing on the phenomena themselves. Instead, we must broaden our view
to focus on the origin, properties, and behaviors of the systems that are
expressed by the phenomena. For example, the allegorical blind men focused
on parts of an elephant, and each man produced an idiosyncratic, ad
hoc model of the animal--e.g., a tree, a wall, a snake, a rope. Because
elements of elephants do not exist independently of whole elephants, understanding
the relationship among the parts requires comprehending the whole animal.
Analogously, to understand consciousness, we must comprehend the whole
system that expresses all the elements commonly identified as, or attributed
to, consciousness.

TES
is an ontological theory of systems that applies at all levels of complexity,
ranging from the prephysical through the physical to the biological. In
this paper, the term prephysical denotes ontologic levels that are
fundamental to those of physical systems, where physical means those
phenomena, processes, and objects described in terms of mass, energy, and
matter. In addition, material indicates the aspect of physical systems
which consists exclusively of matter (e.g., photons, electrons, protons,
neutrons, etc.), and nonmaterial denotes aspects of physical systems
which are not directly observed, but inferred from the behaviors of physical
systems (e.g., mass, energy, force, and fields).

Ontologically,
systems exist at hierarchical levels, and this hierarchy distinguishes
and delimits the disciplines of science. Physics addresses the organization
of physical systems of very low ontological levels, chemistry addresses
physical systems that are organized from the levels studied in physics,
and biology addresses physical systems organized from the levels of chemistry.
By addressing the nature of prephysical systems, TES provides the ontological
base for physics, chemistry, and biology.

TES
also provides a paradigm for psychology and parapsychology. These disciplines
do not address any particular type of system, yet as traditionally defined,
they study the mental operations and behavior of high level biological
systems. A broader view reveals that physical systems of very low levels,
e.g., photons, also exhibit types of "mental" operations--i.e., adaptive
operations on information--as evidenced by their behaviors and communications.
We show in this paper that TES explains these phenomena because they are
expressions of prephysical systems. By addressing these systems, TES directly
explains the fundamental nature of a large group of seemingly disparate,
"spiritual" phenomena for which the traditional paradigms provide no ontology,
e.g., life per se, consciousness, quantum entanglement, and parapsychological
phenomena.

In
sum, TES is an extremely parsimonious, ontologically fundamental, conceptual
model that not only implies a rich set of predictions for unexpected phenomena,
but comprehends and explains a broad range of observed phenomena that are
not explained by the prevailing paradigms. The parsimony and transdisciplinary
applicability of this theory make it a strong candidate to provide the
scientific paradigm for the next century.

Scope
of the Theory

In developing
a theory of consciousness, we must neither limit our view to phenomena
that correspond to the prevailing paradigms, nor exclude phenomena to which
the prevailing world-views are blind. Instead, a deep understanding of
consciousness must originate in an entirely different perspective. In short,
a theory that doesn't explain all of the following phenomena doesn't
adequately explain any of them:

non-experiential,
radically related phenomena, including life per se, the evolution
of species, morphogenesis, "morphic resonance," quantum entanglement, "water
memory", and the homing behavior of pigeons and other animals.

All these
phenomena share a common root: They are products of the properties and
behaviors of prephysical systems, the necessary condition for which is
organization per se. TES describes these systems beginning with
the fundamental postulate of organization: that organization
per se
originates with enformy, the universal, conserved organizing principle
(Watson, 1993). Enformy is the capacity to organize; that is, enformy is
to organization as energy is to work. At prephysical levels of organization,
enformy is expressed as curiosity, mental creativity, life per se,
and the evolution of species. At the quantum level, enformy allows the
nonlocal interactions of entangled photons and atemporally organizes photons
in slit experiments to behave as either particles or waves. At higher ontological
levels, enformy imposes organization on otherwise random physical systems,
e.g., electronic and radioactive random number generators and mechanical
cascades (Jahn, et al, 1987). In short, enformy accounts for the
organization inherent in all holistic systems, whether prephysical, physical,
or biological.

The
enformy posit obviates the need for "self-organizing" to explain of the
origin of complex systems (Kauffman, 1995). Indeed, "self-organizing" is
self-contradictory because it relies on self-reference. That is, if a self
exists to organize itself, it is already organized. But if only elements
of a self exist, no self exists to organize itself. To avoid this contradiction
requires using concepts that are fundamental to the self and its elements--a
requirement met by TES. Complex systems do not organize themselves. Enformy
organizes them.

As
the principle that creates organization, enformy opposes, not entropy,
but the "disorganizing principle" that results in increased entropy. Hence,
enformy is conserved in the same sense that the disorganizing principle
is conserved: Both are expressed as constant, universal tendencies. Like
energy and mass, enformy is not an object or a substance, but a theoretical
quantity that is not directly observable. That is, we infer the existence
of energy, mass, and enformy from their physical expressions. As energy
and mass are the theoretical foundations of physics, enformy is the foundation
of systemics.

The
Theory of Enformed Systems:
Overview and Basic Concepts

Deductively
constructed from the enformy posit, TES is the general conceptual framework
for the organization of holistic, coherent systems. This is TES in overview:

A holistic
system is the sum of its parts plus a four-dimensional map of the relationships
among these parts in space and time.

This map
is a dynamic, active "organizing field" through which enformy organizes
physical entities to correspond to the spatio-temporal nonrandomness inherent
in the field.

The organizing
field itself possesses certain fundamental properties that maintain its
own integrity.

These
properties, in turn, are expressed as the fundamental behaviors of all
holistic systems:

(a)
For individual photons, they are expressed as wave/particle duality.

(b)
For individual living systems, they are expressed as self-awareness, perception,
cognition, memory, and motor activity.

The properties
of the fields also allow them to cohere in spacetime, creating nonlocal,
atemporal interactions among individual systems:

(a)
For systems of photons, these interactions are expressed as quantum entanglement.

(b)
For systems of complex organisms, the interactions are expressed as telepathy,
precognition, psychokinesis, and homing and migratory behaviors.

Because
the concept of organization logically precedes, and is foundational to,
the established concepts of information, energy, and matter, the concept
of organization and its expressions cannot be explained in terms of information,
energy, or matter. Hence, formally describing TES comprises several
theory-specific concepts, and each of these concepts requires a unique
term to label it. When Russek and Schwartz (1996) paraphrased Miller's
(1978) definition of living systems as being "dynamic organizations of
intelligent information expressed in energy and matter," they implied the
operation of enformy in their use of the term dynamic organization.
This dynamic organization is implicit in TES, which comprises the following
theory-specific concepts and their associated terms:

Enformy
originates and sustains the organization of coherent physical systems by
creating enformation and imposing it on matter and energy/mass.

Enformation is nonrandomness--the essence of organization--in any particular frame of
reference.

The terms
enformation
and information label two distinct concepts. Information is physical--the
nonrandom patterns in physical systems--and enformation is prephysical--the nonrandomness inhered in these patterns. Hence, enformation is fundamental
to information, and corresponds to the ontological level of particular
physical systems. Expressions of enformation corresponding to three frames
of reference are: (a) bits for simple systems such as photons; (b) negentropy
for statistical ensembles; and (c) "thoughts" in complex organisms.

The qualifier
enformed denotes the organizing process that is sustained by enformy.

An
enformed
system is any system that is organized as a whole by enformy--i.e.,
any holistic system.

An
enformed
physical system is the sum of its physical parts plus a four-dimensional
map that specifies the relationships among those parts in spacetime.

This map
is a prephysical enformation field that is sustained by enformy.

An enformation
field is the domain of influence of enformy. Enformation fields are continuous
in spacetime, but discontinuous in three-space. This discontinuity accounts
for the nonlocality and atemporality characteristic of many observed behaviors
of physical systems, e.g., quantum correlation and "nonlocal mind".

Enformation
fields are identified by the term SELF3,
the acronym for Singular Enformed Living Field. As the prephysical foundation
for any enformed system, a SELF is the unique identity of that system.
Because SELFs are sets that contain enformation, their contents comprise "memory," which is essential to all coherent systems. Although memory is
inhered in enformed physical systems, such systems are not necessary to
"store" information because the SELF's enformation pre-exists them. SELFs,
for example, are the prephysical systems that underlie enformed energy
systems (Schwartz and Russek, 1997b). These, in turn, create and sustain
enformed material systems (e.g. Miller, 1978). SELFs are also denoted enformy
systems to distinguish them from material systems and energy systems.

Properties
and Behaviors of SELFs

SELFs
possess two fundamental, complementary properties that determine their
behaviors and attributes: conformability and coherency.

Conformability
is a SELF's capacity to conform to enformation under the influence of enformy.
It is essential to the integrity of SELFs as unique entities. Because a
SELF's conformability defines its complexity, it also defines the complexity
of the SELF's associated physical system. The complexity of a physical
system can be realized or potential. For example, as a zygote, an organism's
complexity is mainly potential, whereas as an adult, it becomes mainly
realized.

Conformability
is expressed in two prephysical behaviors that allow a SELF to interact
with itself and maintain its integrity: state-conformance and self-conformance.

State-conformance is a SELF's conforming to its own subsets of enformation. State-conformance
is rudimentary to human perception, cognition, and emotion. That is, a
human SELF can report that it "senses," "thinks," and "feels" because it
conforms to enformation inhered in the states of its associated enformed
physical system--e.g., its brain. State-conformance is symmetric; brain
states concomitantly conform to enformation contained in its associated
SELF. State-conformance is also essential to quantum entanglement--e.g.,
polarization-correlated photons.

Self-conformance is a SELF's conforming to its subsets of enformation as "its own." Through
self-conformance, a human SELF observes and reports that: (a) it exists
as a unique, real entity; (b) it is distinct from its environment, and;
(c) its associated physical system--its "body"--belongs to it. Hence, self-conformance
is rudimentary to human self-awareness, and is essential to ontological
theorizing.

Neither
state-conformance nor self-conformance are exclusive to the SELFs of living
systems, and neither entails what is commonly termed conscious knowledge.
Hence, applying the concepts of state-conformance and self-conformance
precludes the mistake of automatically thinking in terms of anthropomorphic
awareness (or "consciousness"). Because self-conformance and state-conformance
operate at many levels fundamental to the concepts denoted conscious
and
awareness, applying the terms state-conformance and
self-conformance can avoid anthropocentric questions such as, "Are photons and plants conscious?"
Because photons and plants are enformed systems, they self-conform and
state-conform. Further, saying that a photon "knows" its own state of polarization
means that a photon state-conforms and self-conforms to its own polarization
state; it implies nothing anthropomorphic.

Conformancy
is complemented by the second fundamental property of SELFs, coherency,
which allows subsets of SELFs to cohere with one another in spacetime.

Cohering
in spacetime accounts for nonlocal and atemporal interactions with
other SELFs--e.g., telepathy, psychokinesis (PK), precognition, mediumship,
NDEs (Figure 1). It also expresses enformy's tendency toward increasing
complexity and enformation--as evident, for example, in the evolution of
increasingly complex species.

Figure
1. Enformy coheres subsets of existing SELFs in spacetime. In this four-dimensional
"Venn diagram," the vertical axis represents reversible time, and the horizontal
plane represents three-space at a point in time. The three-dimensional
SELFs are subsets of four-dimensional SELFs that are confined to three-space
by their associated physical systems. They are discontinuous in three-space,
but intersect with a SELF that is continuous in spacetime. This four-dimensional
SELF is an enformation field that accounts for nonlocal and atemporal phenomena.
Because subsets of SELFs are themselves SELFs, higher level SELFs inhering
lower level SELFs corresponds to a four-dimensional translation of Koestler's
"holarchy" (1967). (Figure due to Antonio Barchetti, personal communication,
1998.)

Cohering
in spacetime creates new SELFs and allows existing SELFs to nonlocally
and atemporally interact with other SELFs. Thus coherency is the property
of SELFs that allows the "unbroken wholeness" of the cosmic interconnectedness
characterized by Bohm (1980) as the "implicate order." Coherency is also
the theoretical foundation of the "systemic memory" described by Schwartz
and Russek (1997b).

Because
enformy is essential to cohering, it is the theoretical equivalent of life
itself. Thus TES is the general theoretical foundation for expressions
of (a) life per se; (b) mental operations--e.g., memory, consciousness,
parapsychological phenomena; and (c) biological correlates of mental operations,
e.g., neurophysiological binding (Damasio, 1989) and the structures and
processes Sheldrake (1995a) identifies as "species memory," "habits of
nature," "formative causation," "morphic fields," and "morphic resonance."

The
necessary complementarity between conformancy and coherency is illustrated
by two statements: (a) Without the conformancy-sustained integrity of SELFs
as unique entities, coherency would bind all SELFs into a single, cosmic
SELF, eliminating the possibility of individual entities; and (b) without
coherency, SELFs could not evolve, because new SELFs could not be created.

Symbolic
Expressions of Enformy

Because
enformy is fundamental to the organization of all systems--including mathematics
itself--its direct expressions cannot be expressed in mathematical forms.
Instead, the behavior of fundamental enformy-dependent processes must be
expressed metamathematically. That's because direct expressions
of enformy occur at levels of organization that are lower than those expressed
in organized mathematical structures and processes. For example, the equation,
e = mc2, describes the relationship of energy and mass, and
enformy is expressed in the form of the equation itself. This interpretation
implies that enformy is fundamental to the relationship between mass and
energy.

Consider
metamathematically the notion that measurement collapses wavefunctions
to create "real" (i.e., three-dimensional) particles from probabilities.
The phrase "collapse of the wavefunction" is misleading because wavefunctions
are abstract symbols; they do not collapse. But enformed systems can "collapse"
(disenform), and the result of such "collapse" is either described by
a wavefunction or not. Under TES, the "collapse" is the fundamental change
in an enformed system that occurs with measurement. When a simple enformed
system such as a photon yields enformation to a measuring instrument, it
loses its associated enformation or a subset of it. This loss decoheres
the photon from an object in spacetime to an object in three-space. Metamathematically,
then, decoherence corresponds to a change in the type of mathematical form
that describes the system--from the quantum statistics of spacetime to the
classical statistics of three-space.

Implications
of TES

Implications
of TES are based on the fundamental properties and behaviors of SELFs operating
at many levels of organization. Three aspects of TES imply (i.e., predict)
three corresponding categories of observed phenomena. Identifying these
aspects does not imply that they operate independently of one another.
In all categories, enformy organizes SELFs in spacetime to produce the
behaviors of SELFs and their associated physical systems.

Aspect
1: Subsets of SELFs cohere in spacetime.

Cohering
in spacetime allows elemental SELFs to state-conform to the enformation
field common to all of them, thereby organizing them to determine the behaviors
of their associated physical systems.

Quantum
entanglement exemplifies this category of predictions. The reality of the
"EPR" phenomenon (Einstein, et al, 1935) was demonstrated in experiments
by Alain Aspect, et al (1982). Pairs of polarization-correlated
photons traveling in opposite directions maintain their correlation even
when an orientation is experimentally imposed on one of them. This appears
paradoxical if it is assumed that information travels between the photons.
That is, because information is physical, superluminal communication would
be impossible under relativity.

Under
TES, however, information does not travel between the photons. The coherent
two-photon system is associated with a prephysical enformy system in spacetime:
Enformy entangles the photons' states by cohering their SELFs to create
a new SELF (the two-photon system), and the SELF of each photon concomitantly
state-conforms to enformation inhered in this greater field. In this frame
of reference, enformation (nonrandomness) is expressed as conserved correlation
in binary form: 1 if correlation is conserved, 0 if not. That is, if the
correlation were not conserved, the relationship between the photons' polarizations
would be random. Because this system's enformation field is neither time-
nor space-variant, the conformation is atemporal and nonlocal--and the notion
of superluminal communication is not necessary.

The
homing behavior of pigeons and other animals (Sheldrake, 1995b) illustrates
an expression of coherency in living systems. Under TES, enformy coheres
a subset of the SELF of an animal with SELFs of their homes--which comprise
the SELFs of other animals, associated humans, geographic location, etc.
The resulting SELF provides the animal's SELFs with a constant, four-dimensional
"sense" of direction. In the simplest possible model, this "sense" is binary:
At any point in its journey, the animal state-conforms to whether it is
traveling (1) toward home or (0) not toward home.

Aspect
2: The existence of SELFs is independent of the physical systems they can
enform.

Because
SELFs exist in spacetime, whereas physical systems are confined to three-space,
the observable behaviors of SELFs depend on their influences in organizing
physical systems in ways that alter their behavior in spacetime. That expressions
of SELFs can be observed only partially by the senses limits, but does
not negate, the value of the empirical method in studying them. Implications
of this aspect of the theory include near-death experiences (NDEs), out-of-body
experiences (OBEs), apparitions, mediumship, and "reincarnation." More
commonplace phenomena are exemplified by the SELF controlling its own brain
(Eccles, 1994).

Under
TES, NDEs (Moody, 1988; Schroeter-Kunhardt, 1993) occur when enformy inherent
in the near-dead person's SELF coheres subsets of that SELF with SELFs
remote in time and space from the person's physical system. The SELF state-conforms
to enformation inhered in this coherent field, and thereby obtains a sequence
of perceptions (typically an OBE, tunnel, light, life review, loved ones),
then re-enforms the physical system. If re-enforming does not occur, the
physical system (body) irreversibly loses its associated SELF and enformy;
it dies. Certain neurophysiological states might correspond to several
of the NDE perceptions, but not to all of them--for example, OBEs with verifiable
perceptions of remote objects and events (Swann, 1975; McMoneagle, 1997).

Several
extensive studies have developed data that support the "reincarnation"
hypothesis (Stevenson, 1987, 1993, 1997). Under TES, subsets of SELFs of
persons who die subsequently contribute to realizing the potential complexity
of the physical systems of new individuals. By partially enforming new
physical systems, these subsets contribute to aspects of the new person's
psychogenesis and morphogenesis that are not determined by DNA. They (a)
impose specific "memories" on the systems; (b) express somatic enformation
in them; and (c) cohere with subsets of enformation inherent in the new
physical system (e.g., inherited mental traits and other characteristics).
The products of these events are partially observable by humans because
the newly expressed SELFs can (a) self-report memories of previous lives
and objectively display corresponding temperaments (Stevenson, 1987); (b)
display birthmarks on their associated physical systems resembling the
cause of the prior death (Stevenson, 1993, 1997); and of course, (c) develop
new memories--i.e., gain subsets of enformation--from their own DNA and ongoing
life experiences.

Under
TES, reincarnation is partial because it entails subsets of the
SELF's enformation sequentially mapping two or more physical systems. Hence,
the type of "reincarnation" predicted by TES generalizes beyond the traditional
model. For example, TES predicts that partial "reincarnation" occurs in
organ transplantation: Subsets of the SELF of a heart donor subsequently
partially enforms the physical system of a recipient's SELF, creating new
"memories," preferences, or temperament traits (Pearsall, 1998; Sylvia,
1997). Moreover, death of the donor is not necessary for this to occur.
TES predicts the same process occurs with transplanted kidneys and livers
from still-living donors. It also occurs with non-living objects that provide
enformation to persons talented in psychometry.

Under
TES, apparitions manifest the behaviors of strictly prephysical SELFs--i.e.,
SELFs not associated with physical systems. These phenomena include local
recurrent apparitions (Broughton, 1992; Holzer, 1994) and sentient apparitions
that adaptably communicate with humans (Stevenson, 1995; Guggenheim and
Guggenheim, 1996). The stereotyped behaviors and consistent images of local
recurrent apparitions are evidence that SELFs can fragment into independent
subsets, thereby conforming them to limited sets of enformation. In contrast,
the interactive behaviors of sentient apparitions indicate that SELFs can
also remain largely intact. These apparitions typically appear immediately
following the death of their associated physical systems, and seem motivated
to communicate with specific living individuals. Such appearances are evidently
not limited by time or space: They can appear at great distances from the
site of the death, perhaps instantaneously. Such SELFs produce observable
manifestations by organizing three-dimensional matter and electromagnetic
radiation, including that in the range of visible light. Therefore such
apparitions are primarily expressions of enformy, and secondarily, of energy.
TES also implies observable apparitions of living persons while they experience
OBEs (Schroeter-Kunhardt, 1993).

Mediumship
is consistent with this aspect of TES, occurring when a subset of a strictly
prephysical SELF (i.e., a surviving SELF) coheres with a subset of the
SELF of a living human (the "medium"). Mediumship has been studied extensively.
For example, over a 50 year period, the British and American Societies
for Psychical Research conducted controlled studies with Gladys Osborne
Leonard (Smith, 1964). Mrs. Leonard consistently produced accurate, verified
information, some of which was precognitive. Mediumship can provide evidence
of survival of SELFs, yet it is important to control for telepathy by the
medium. One such experiment entailed "book tests:" obtaining information
from particular pages of specific books via Mrs. Leonard, even though the
books chosen were not known to her or to any other living person prior
to the experiments.

The
book tests are consistent with the hypothesis that surviving prephysical
SELFs can not only perceive and communicate, but learn, analyze, make decisions,
and participate creatively in experiments. These and other psychological
and behavioral characteristics of SELFs are critical to distinguishing
sources of information available to mediums. For example, aside from the
possibility of fraud, two alternative hypotheses are usually advanced to
account for the information: (a) mediums obtain information from their
environments via putative "super-psi" (Braude, 1992); or (b) mediums converse
and interact with surviving SELFs. Under TES, these are not two distinct
hypotheses. Both mediumship and psi (e.g., telepathy, remote viewing, precognition)
operate through the same process--subsets of SELFs cohering in spacetime.
This obviates, not only the need for the prefix in the term super-psi,
but the need to distinguish between the survival hypothesis or psi.
The relevant question is whether or not psi operates between mediums and
unique, identifiable, psychologically-active, strictly prephysical SELFs.
It is noteworthy that the problem of identifying such SELFs--the "problem
of other minds"--is the same whether or not those SELFs are associated with
enformed physical systems--i.e., living bodies.

Because
TES predicts that strictly prephysical SELFs exhibit atemporality and nonlocality
in addition to curiosity, creativity, perception, memory, social bonding,
etc., it is rich in testable predictions that can guide future scientific
exploration concerning the question of survival of SELFs (Schwartz, et
al, 1998). For example, it predicts that surviving SELFs are motivated
to find ways to demonstrate their own existence with or without human mediumship.
It has been reported that surviving SELFs have interacted with physical
instruments such as telephones, computer disks, and video monitors (Kubis
and Macy, 1995). Because TES is not limited to organizing the structures
and behaviors of biological systems, it directly predicts such interactions.
That is, it implies "mind-machine" or "mind-matter" interactions (Jahn
et al, 1987; Matzke, 1996; Radin, 1997), whether or not those "minds"
are associated with physical bodies.

Aspect
3: Human SELFs can report the products of their state-conformance and self-conformance
to other humans.

Under
this aspect of the theory, human SELFs can provide data concerning their
physical and psychic environments--whether ordinary or extraordinary--that
cannot be obtained in any other way. For example, Ingo Swann (1975) wrote
these impressions of his extraordinary remote viewing and psychokinetic
experiences:

I
feel it possible to suggest that human consciousness is not imprisoned
in the human body, but capable of becoming coincident in two or possibly
more places at any given time. . . . Consciousness, the thinking entity,
the one that
uses mind, is not dependent solely upon the physical
body. That entity, you, is capable of extending its view of the universe,
at least through hunches, intuition, creative insights, and even well-formed
psychic transcendence wherein the barriers of matter, energy, space, and
time are barriers no longer.

Swann's
impressions can be interpreted under TES: (a) a SELF ("human consciousness")
is the prephysical, self-aware entity that "uses" subsets of enformation
associated with it ("mind"); (b) because it is atemporal, nonlocal, and
independent of its associated physical system, a SELF can be "coincident
in two or possibly more places at any given time;" and (c) a SELF can cohere
with other SELFs in spacetime, thereby "extending its view of the universe."

In
ordinary human experience, human SELFs
behave concordantly with
their conforming to states of their associated physical systems and verbally
report the products of their own state-conformance and self-conformance.
Hence, SELFs provide data that can be applied to develop a TES-based, fundamental
theory of human mentality and behavior. Implications of TES include the
rudiments of normal human mentality, as well as unusual expressions of
mentality such as multiple personality disorder. Moreover, because TES
applies to all SELFs, its scope is not limited to humans. For example,
it applies to the gorilla, Koko (Patterson and Linden, 1981), because she
communicates with humans, via sign language, symbolically in the first
person.

The
rudiments of human SELF mentality and behavior include:

Curiosity:
the tendency of enformy to increase complexity. Thus curiosity is a direct
expression of enformy realizing the potential complexity of a SELF.

Memory:
enformation fields belonging to SELFs, which are prephysical systems to
which physical systems--e.g., ensembles of neurons--conform.

Perception:
SELFs state-conforming to enformation inherent in the sensory apparatus
and other systems of the physical system, as well as enformation from extrasensory
sources (e.g., telepathy, remote viewing).

Cognition,
intuition, creativity, and imagination: a continuous maelstrom of state-conformations
among subsets of the SELF, which create, reinforce, and annihilate one
another. This maelstrom is traditionally denoted the "unconscious mind."

Social
bonding, collective unconscious: enformy cohering subsets of enformation
of two or more SELFs.

Emotion:
the SELF's conforming to the general state of organization of its associated
physical system. That is, fear, anger, and sadness accompany decreasing
organization, and joy accompanies increasing organization. Emotion differs
from cognition, which conforms to specific states.

Dissociative
Identity Disorder (DID), formerly identified as Multiple Personality Disorder,
is an experiment in nature that represents an extreme form of "altered
states of consciousness." Clinically, DID is characterized as two or more
"alters" (alternative personalities) recurrently taking control of an individual's
behavior (Putnam, 1989). Subjectively, each alter identifies itself as
a whole, unique individual with its own sex, name, set of memories, and
perspective on historical events. In clinical settings, alters can often
be summoned simply by calling their names.

By
objective observation, each alter displays its own habits, gestures, temperament,
handwriting, vocabulary, speech patterns, tone of voice, and character
traits. Instrumentally recorded features of alters include differences
in galvanic skin response, evoked cortical potentials, oculomotor variations,
and muscle tension and brain activity as detected by electroencephalography
(Putnam, 1984). Alters also differ among themselves in pain threshold,
visual acuity, sensitivity to allergens, and responsiveness of blood sugar
levels to insulin (American Psychiatric Association, 1994).

Superficially,
alters appear whole and radically distinct; i.e., each appears to completely
determine the person's mentality and behavior. However, closer observation
reveals that they are neither whole nor distinct: (a) alters may or may
not be aware of the existence of the others; (b) at least one alter is
aware of all the others--including their individual histories and memories;
(c) alters are often amnestic to periods of time when they are not in control;
(d) at least one alter constantly monitors the environment, and selects
which alter controls the physical system's behavior; and (e) the psychotherapeutic
process can join the alters, which could not occur if the alters were radically
distinct.

These
findings are readily explained by TES. DID expresses the qualities of a
single SELF--the "fundamental SELF"--that is associated with a physical system.
Each alter is a coherent subset of enformation that expresses "sub-SELF."
Sub-SELFs comprise elements of three types of memory: semantic (language),
episodic (historical events), and procedural (behavioral and psychological
habits) (Schacter, 1996). The sub-SELFs of persons with DID are disjoint
at high and middle levels of organization--i.e., they do not share high
and middle level ("conscious" and "preconscious") subsets of enformation
with one another. Yet all sub-SELFs cohere at the low level ("unconscious")
of the fundamental SELF. Each sub-SELF, while in control, enforms the physical
system to produce its distinctive high and middle level behavior patterns,
physiological states, and self-reported subjective states--its so-called
"personality."

In
general, dissociation and other altered states of consciousness reflect
a hierarchy of parallel sub-SELFs, each of which can control their associated
physical systems. Sub-SELFs that are disjoint only at the highest levels
of organization conform the physical system in everyday role-playing and
professional acting. Between the extremes of DID and everyday behaviors,
sub-SELFs that temporarily become disjoint at high and mid levels produce
the behaviors and experiences exhibited in fugue states, transient amnesia,
hypnotic states, transcendental meditation, alcohol-induced blackouts,
and the flashbacks typical of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder.

Discussion

The contemporary
study of consciousness demonstrates the accuracy of the observation of
linguist, Benjamin Whorf (1956) that "science has reached, without having
intended to, a frontier. . . . The frontier was foreseen in principle very
long ago, and given a name that has descended to our day clouded with myth.
That name is Babel." Evidence that consciousness studies have reached Babel
is found in the absence of a consistent definition of consciousness
itself, even within specific academic disciplines. Indeed, investigators
don't even agree on whether consciousness is an entity, state, process,
phenomenon, or epiphenomenon.The
linguistic problems that characterize consciousness studies reflect that
no traditional scientific discipline is broad enough or deep enough to
account for all the phenomena currently identified as consciousness,
much less those phenomena such as life itself, quantum entanglement, and
parapsychological phenomena that are radically-related to consciousness.
While the majority of investigators of consciousness limit the meaning
of consciousness to comply with the boundaries of the various prevailing
paradigms, others realize that science itself must be expanded to accommodate
consciousness. For example, noting that psychic phenomena, like quantum
measurements, entail observer effects and nonlocality, Utts and Josephson
(1996) propose that an ultimate theory of nature must describe data reflecting
a subquantum domain. Penrose (1996) contends that a theory of consciousness
will require "radical upheaval in the very basis of physical theory."
We suggest that TES provides this basis by describing the properties and
behaviors of processes in the prephysical ("subquantum") domain. Moreover,
we anticipate that understanding these prephysical processes will require
developing a new scientific language.

Popper
(1980) described the empirical sciences as a system of testable theories,
where a theory is a universal statement; hence, the sciences are a system
of statements. Characterizing theories as statements illuminates two critical
issues: Theories are public expressions of private concepts, and the correspondence
of these expressions to their underlying concepts depends on the suitability
of the language supporting the statements. It is therefore heuristic to
realize that TES--indeed any theory--begins as a system of concepts, not
a system of statements.

Because
TES is a system of concepts, metalinguistic analysis is necessary to discern
the meaning of its theory-specific terms. Words are inherently ambiguous
because they are organized at high levels of complexity, but founded on
concepts that are very deep. Hence, focusing on the words--the jargon of
TES--misses the concepts labeled by those terms. As Whorf noted, "What we
call `scientific thought' is a specialization of the western Indo-European
type of language, which has developed . . . a set of different dialects.
THESE DIALECTS ARE NOW BECOMING MUTUALLY UNINTELLIGIBLE. The term 'space,'
for instance, does not and CANNOT mean the same thing to a psychologist
as to a physicist." Illustrating such a disparity of meaning, SELFs have
been mistakenly equated to Plato's Ideas. The foundation of Plato's
terminology did not incorporate the concepts of fields, nonlocality, atemporality,
the spacetime continuum, or energy as the conserved capacity to perform
work. Therefore, his terminology could not correspond to the concept of
SELF, which inheres enformation fields, a conserved organizing principle,
and nonlocality in three-space as a function of a continuous field in spacetime.

TES
is highly parsimonious because it describes the prephysical phenomena expressed
by all systems, e.g., self-awareness, life itself, telepathy, precognition,
and quantum entanglement. This economy of explanation makes TES potentially
a widely useful theory. To achieve its maximum predictive and explanatory
potential, however, TES must be expressed in terms that are appropriate
to the phenomena under study. For instance, the statement that enformation
is "nonrandomness in any particular frame of reference" means that expressions
of enformation are different for physics, chemistry, biology, psychology,
and parapsychology. Because the various types of enformation are qualitatively
different from one another, their expressions comprise a hierarchy of languages
that correspond to the complexity of the systems studied in each academic
discipline. Thus, whereas mathematics is suitable for the analyzing the
least complex systems, linguistics is appropriate for more complex systems.
In general, to provide us valid conceptualizations of the cosmos, the structure
of scientific languages must be isomorphic with reality at all ontological
levels. Further, because the levels of abstraction that describe prephysical
events must correspond to prephysical levels of existence, the concepts
of TES are necessarily more abstract than those of physics.

The
structure of the English language is a serious impediment to describing
TES at its roots. The language presupposes the primacy of entities (nouns)
that perform actions or undergo processes (verbs). In contrast, TES specifies
that the process of enforming creates entities (SELFs). Not all languages
are limited as is English. As Alford (1996) points out, Native Americans
can use their languages to "speak all day long and not utter a single noun."
Verb based, Native American languages are suited to talking about--indeed,
thinking about--processes rather than things. Thus, following Alford's analysis,
understanding the spiritual aspects of systemics requires developing a
new scientific language that precludes the ambiguous, often self-contradictory
meanings of conventional scientific terminology.

In
this light, consider the problem of describing concepts that pertain to
organization per se. Each language, mathematical or linguistic,
reflects a certain type of organization, but this organization does not
necessarily correspond to the organization of the cosmos. For instance,
under the calculus invented by Newton to analytically describe mechanics,
time is reversible in three-space. Moreover, although Newton's calculus
can analytically describe the gravitational interaction of two bodies,
it cannot describe the interactions of three bodies.

Now
consider a highly abstract concept of TES: A holistic system is the sum
of its physical elements plus a four-dimensional map--a SELF--that
specifies the relationships among those elements in space and time. The
acronym SELF is used because it derives from four characteristics
of the map. A SELF is (a) singular, i.e., unique; (b) enformed, i.e., organized
as a whole by enformy; (c) living, i.e., self-aware, state-aware, and capable
of cohering with other SELFs in spacetime; and (d) a field, i.e., its field
of influence is continuous in spacetime. Thus the acronym embodies the
processes that define the entity. Note also that a SELF is a set that contains
enformation at many levels of complexity; it is not the enformation itself.
That is, a SELF is a container, not its contents.

The
following terms illustrate further why the language of TES must be theory-specific
to avoid confusing its concepts with familiar ones.

Enformy
points to the concept of the universal creative principle. Although enformy
is a noun, it does not refer to an entity or substance. Instead, as the
term energy identifies the quantity of workability, enformy
identifies the quantity of organizability.

Enforming
is the process of organizing prephysical (spiritual) holistic systems in
spacetime; it is the process (verb) that creates entities (nouns).

Enformed
physical system expresses the concept of a SELF specifying the relationships
among all of its physical elements. Thus this concept corresponds to the
nature of a living body, as opposed to a dead one.

State-conformance
and self-conformance inhere the concepts of an enformed system maintaining
its own integrity. Self-conformance is rudimentary to human self-awareness.

Coherency
connotes the notion of SELFs interconnecting in spacetime, thereby creating
new SELFs. Hence coherency is complementary to the integrity-maintaining
processes of conformancy.

In sum,
the scientific study of organization per se brings us to a frontier.
To cross this frontier, we must follow the advice of Alford (1996): "When
the phenomena being studied are of such characteristics that the language
you are using no longer describes the phenomena effectively--change the
language!" As we anticipate the development of systemics and TES, this
will be the major work of science for the next century.

Summary
and Conclusion

The enformy
posit and its derivative Theory of Enformed Systems constitute a comprehensive,
transdisciplinary theory of consciousness because they explain, not only
the phenomena conventionally attributed to consciousness, but a host of
other phenomena that are radically related to these. The enformy posit
and TES are summarized in the following statements:

Enformy is the universal organizing principle--the fundamental, conserved capacity
to organize. Enformy is to organization as energy is to work.

The
Theory
of Enformed Systems, a general theory of systems, applies to all holistic
systems, living or nonliving, material or nonmaterial. These systems are
generically identified as enformed systems.

Enformy
sustains the organization of four-dimensional enformation fields, where
enformation
denotes nonrandomness in any particular frame of reference.

Enformy
organizes energy and elements of matter into coherent systems by mapping
them to enformation fields. Coherent, holistic, physical systems are identified
as
enformed physical systems.

An enformation
field in spacetime is denoted SELF.

SELFs
possess two fundamental, complementary properties, conformability
and
coherency, that ultimately account for the subjective elements
of consciousness as well as objective interactions with other SELFs.

Conformability
and coherency are expressed in three fundamental behaviors of SELFs--state-conformance,
self-conformance, and
cohering in spacetime.

State-conformance
and self-conformance are expressed as the subjective elements of consciousness:
Self-conformance is expressed as self-awareness, and state-conformance
is expressed as perception, cognition, and other mental operations and
attributes.

As the
creative principle, enformy organizes and sustains holistic systems at
all levels of complexity. Hence, systemics--the study of holistic systems--is
the most fundamental branch of science. Systemics provides unifying concepts
that underpin all we can know about the operations of the cosmos--not only
the mental operations of humans, but the behaviors of classical and quantum
objects. Moreover, because SELFs are the organizing fields that are fundamental,
not only to quantum fields, but to fields sustained by energy and mass,
TES provides the foundation for a unified field theory.Under
TES, human life and mentality could not exist without enformy. Yet limiting
ourselves to the anthropocentric perspective precludes contemplating the
broader implications of the theory. For example, expressed as the tendency
to increasing complexity, enformy is the basis of life itself. This implies
that enformy compels organisms to occur and evolve in whatever forms
the physical environment allows. Hence, intelligent life on our planet
did not occur as an unlikely accident, nor does it occur accidentally elsewhere
in the universe (Schwartz and Russek, 1997a, b). Further, because all enformed systems originate at the ontologic level of SELFs, the traditional
distinction between "living" and "nonliving" must be reexamined. In this
deep sense, systemics points the way to a comprehensive scientific paradigm
where consciousness is a fundamental feature of science (Chalmers, 1995).

Penrose,
R. (1996). Beyond the doubting of a shadow: A reply to commentaries on
Shadows
of the Mind. PSYCHE: an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness
2 (23), January 1996 11.1-2. (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/psyche/public/volume2-1/psyche-96-2-23-shadows-10-penrose.html)

Footnotes

In
earlier descriptions of this theory, the term
enformed gestalt was
used interchangeably with enformed system. The term gestalt
has been dropped.

Principle:
origin, source; source of action. In generalized sense: A fundamental source
from which something proceeds; a primary element, force, or law which produces
or determines particular results; the ultimate basis upon which the existence
of something depends; cause, in the widest sense (OED).

In
previous papers, SELF was denoted ipseon (self-entity); from Latin,
ipse: he himself, self, the only one that exists (OED).

Synecdoche:
a figure by which a more comprehensive term is used for a less comprehensive
or vice versa; as whole for part or part for whole, genus for species or
species for genus, etc. (OED).

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